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Guide:Beginner's Guide
So you want to be the most fearsome force in Atlantis? Well, everybody has to begin somewhere, and you've come to the right place. The following is a brief summary for new players on how to get started and where to go from there! Blue text contains links to other relevant pages in this wiki! Although the quests given to new players in Dragons of Atlantis will teach you how to play the game, they go about it doing in a very inefficient way. If you're looking for more effective information, make sure you find an alliance with veteran members and READ THIS PAGE! 'Common Acronyms and Initialisms' Players often employ specific jargon and terminology when communicating via Messages and Chat. Here are some basic acronyms and initialisms to help get you started: *'DoA' - Dragons of Atlantis *'HBM' - Halberdsman (rare usage) *'Mino' - Minotaur *'LBM' - Longbowman *'SSD' - Swift Strike Dragon *'BD' - Battle Dragon *'AT' - Armored Transport *'FM' - Fire Mirror *'PD' - Pack Dragon *'DS' - Dark Slayer *'LC' - Lightning Cannon *'Drake' - Storm Drake *'FT' - Fangtooth *'GO' - Granite Ogre *'LJ' - Lava Jaw *'Ban' - Banshee *'SR' - Soul Reaper *'VD' - Venom Dweller *'FG' - Frost Giant *'PT' - Petrified Titan *'SS' - Sand Strider *'GD' - Great Dragon *'ED' - Elemental Dragon (i.e., Water, Stone, Frost/ Ice, Fire, and Wind Dragons) *'WD' - Water Dragon (or Wraith Dragon, in rare instances) *'WrD' - Wraith Dragon (rare usage) *'SD' - Stone Dragon *'ID' - Frost Dragon (often referred to as Ice Dragon, so the consequential abbreviation will not be confused with the Fire Dragon, though this is technically incorrect) *'FD' - Fire Dragon *'MS' - Mephitic Serpent *'WD' - Wind Dragon *'ACD'/ CD/ AD - Amber Crest Dragon *'HD' - Helio Dragon *'Agri' - Agriculture *'Clar' - Clairvoyance *'RD' - Rapid Deployment *'WC' - Weapons Calibration/ World Chat *'Met' - Metallurgy *'Med' - Medicine *'Lev' - Levitation *'Merc' - Mercantilism *'AC' - Aerial Combat/ Alliance Chat/ Anthropus Camp *'Rat'/ Rati - Rationing (rare usage) *'Fort' - Fortress (rare usage) *'DK' - Dragon's Keep *'MP' - Muster Point *'SC' - Science Center *'MSm' - Metalsmith (rare usage) *'Fact' - Factory (rare usage) *'SV' - Storage Vault *'LM' - Lumbermill *'Q' - Quarry (rare usage) *'Anthro' - Anthropus *'Wild' - Wilderness *'OP' - Outpost *'Pop' - Population 'The Very Basics' Here is a list of basic topics to get started. Click the blue links for more information. *'Resources ' *'Taxes and Population ' *'Rubies' 'Fortuna's Games' Every day that you log into Dragons of Atlantis, you are awarded a Fortunas Ticket to play Fortuna's Chance, a lottery game where you will win one of a variety of prizes. You can close the screen by clicking the "X" and reopening Fortuna's Chance to refresh. This will change the prizes and give you a better chance to win something you want; just keep doing this until good odds are displayed. It is a good idea to refresh until a Completion Grant appears on the page. If you have logged on five out of the last seven days, you are awarded a Fortunas Medallion instead, which allows you to play Fortuna's Vault, a game of the same type, only with better prizes. 'Power' Power is a measurement of how much strength your empire has. You gain power by building and upgrading buildings, starting Outposts, and training Troops. It is possible to have a high Power, but have virtually no military strength. This is sometimes called "Fake Power." 'Your First 24 Hours on ''Dragons Of Atlantis The first thing you need to get a handle on in Dragons of Atlantis is resource management. You need your resources to build anything and everything, from a humble farm to a new '''Outpost (once you find your Dragon Eggs). Your first twenty-four hours in Atlantis should be dedicated to maximizing your resource production as quickly as possible. I advise you to upgrade your Fortress to level 2, then build one farm and three of each of the other fields (Lumbermills, Quarries, and Mines), upgrading them to level 9 as soon as resources become available. More than three of each kind of field is not advised, because this will hinder your ability to produce troops later on, as described in detail here. Your food being negative is NOT a bad thing; this means you have troops. There is absolutely no reason to try to stay in the positive, because food is easy to get from Anthropus Camps. In order to produce resources, you also have to have enough population to work the fields. You should build between four-to-six houses, but NO MORE than that. I suggest upgrading these as resources become available, preferably until they are all at least level 6. This will give you enough population to produce resources and some extra to train troops. Four-to-six houses is recommended; more than that is ill-advised, since you have to leave your room for other buildings. The most important of these buildings are garrisons, which allow you to train troops and decrease training time for said troops. You should build a total of thirteen garrisons; however, don't forget to build all the other essential buildings, which are listed in the "What to build next?" ''list. Although it is one of your initial quests, building a Theater is often '''NOT '''recommended, as they waste space and are only useful during the first part of the game. '''Time Management' Dragons of Atlantis is a real-time strategy game, in which everything is measured in a number of seconds, minutes, and hours. Although managing your time to the second isn't crucial to enjoying yourself, if you're looking to build your power as fast as you can, managing your time efficiently (so you have nearly zero downtime) is a must. Perform tasks that take several hours overnight, leaving the smaller ones for when you have time to watch the game. You can get a lot done on DoA while doing housework or school work, returning every few minutes to set up more buildings, train more troops, or undergo more research. If you want power to obtain power relatively quickly, be sure to upgrade your Great Dragon (via the Dragon's Keep) as soon as possible. This gives you heaps of power; plus, it keeps you and your empire a lot safer. Building an Army Once your resource production is underway, it's time to start building your army. Armies require a few things. First, they require Garrisons; next, they need idle population. Finally, it requires food, as your army will consume it at an hourly rate, detracting from production of aforementioned food. The first thing you want to train is Longbowmen, who excel at taking out level 1-5 Wildernesses and Anthropus Camps with little to no losses. Once you are able to conquer these camps, you have a quick and easy way to procure large amounts of food for training your troops. Longbowmen require a level 4 Garrison and level 1 Weapons Calibration research. You'll want to get on this as soon as you can. Base Construction Once you're producing a respectable amount of resources, you may want to consider filling out the rest of the slots in your city. The general thought on this is to build one of each of your main buildings (Muster Point, Officer Quarters, et cetera) and four-to-six houses, with the remaining slots consisting of garrisons. The Storage Vault is optional, but it can prove useful throughout the game. The Theater is, again, typically ill-advised, because it is only useful during the first week or so of game play. Quest Optimization During your first twenty-four hours, you may be approaching a bottle neck in terms of production. At this point, rather than continuing to build to optimize resources (which can cause a building stall), you should build or upgrade something that has a net gain of resources or little-to-no net loss instead. How This Works (Example: One House) A single House costs 100 Wood, 500 Lumber, 50 Metal, and 100 Stone. However, there is a quest reward for building your first house, resulting in 200 Wood, 1000 Lumber, 100 Metal, and 200 Stone. As such, building your first house actually has an overall net gain and, in the end, the only real cost is that of the time needed to build it. Note that this is only for the first house you build, as the quest reward can only be claimed once. '' ''Example Net Gains 1 House = 100 Wood, 500 Lumber, 50 Metal, 100 Stone 3 Houses = 400 Wood, 1500 Lumber, 450 Metal, 400 Stone Build Sentinal Watch = 150 Wood, 1000 Lumber, 300 Metal, 3000 Stone Upgrade Fortress to Level 2 = 2100 Wood, 11400 Lumber, 2300 Metal, 500 Stone Example Net Neutral: Building a Rookery Building your first Rookery results in a break-even. That is to say, you neither gain nor lose (at least in terms of technicality, though doing so does allow you to progress further in the game). 'Wildernesses' Wildernesses can be conquered by your troops and will yield increases in resource production. They are essential to keeping your resource production high. You can read about them in more detail on the Wilderness 'page. 'Great Dragon As you've no doubt noticed, there is a rather prominent building in the middle of your city! This is your Dragon's Keep, where your Great Dragon will be born and raised. To "raise" your dragon, you must upgrade your Dragon's Keep. Your Great Dragon is the focus of the first week or two of your stay in Atlantis, e.g., namely, getting your Great Dragon Armor, and teaching her Aerial Combat. Getting there isn't hard, but it does take some patience! In order to get your Great Dragon armored up and ready for combat, you'll need to accomplish a few things... *'Research Dragonry and Aerial Combat ' *'Great Dragon Armor' 'Starting Your First Outpost' So, you've attacked dozens of Anthropus Camps, researched for days, and, finally, your Great Dragon is ready for battle! She wouldn't be of much use if all she did was stand around looking tough, so let's make her earn her keep! In order to start your first Outpost, you need your Water Dragon Egg, which is easy enough to find. But, before you start your search, there are some things you need to know. Dragon Healing Your Great Dragon is tough, but not invulnerable. Every time you send your Great Dragon on an attack, she will take damage, even if there are no Anthropus in the wilderness to hurt her, although the damage will be significantly less than if she were overwhelmed and defeated. She must heal after every fight. In order to minimize healing time, you should send two waves of troops before your dragon, in order to catch any stragglers. The number of attacks your dragon can make depends on how much damage she takes, the level of your Keep, and your level of Aerial Combat. Click here to read more about Great Dragons. Starting Your Outpost Now that you have your egg, visit this link to start your Outpost '''and find advice about how it should be built. I advise not building fields in any of your OPs, because this lowers your idle population and doesn't provide much of a benefit. '''NOTE: Do not place your OPs right next to your city! Space them out, so they are more difficult to find! 'The Military' Arguably, the most important part of your Empire will be your Military, so it warrants some basic discussion here. If you want more details on how the combat system itself works, visit this page. Idle Population can sometimes present the biggest obstacle for training your troops. Your Idle Population = Current Population - laborers - troops currently in training. If your Idle Population is 0, you cannot train any new troops. However, it is important to note that Idle Population replenishes itself. Every time a group of troops is finished training, the Idle Population returns to you. After you have the troops to begin attacking other players for gold, I suggest dropping and leaving the tax rate at 0%, so you can use your full idle population for training. Troops For detailed information about troops, visit the Troops page. For information of how they work together during battles, visit the Battle page. 'The Breakdown' This is a general guide as to how to get your city from 0 to 1 million power as quickly as possible, i.e., roughly three-to-four weeks of dedicated game play. Keep in mind that you should be researching, building, and training concurrently! In order to get built up quickly, you must ALWAYS have things upgrading! JOIN A HELPFUL ALLIANCE IMMEDIATELY! If yours cannot answer your questions and assist in some way with resources, leave them and join another...it will only go downhill from there. ' Make sure you are accepting the 'Quest rewards as they are completed; this resource boost will really help you early on. Just don't put too much effort into completing the quests as they pop up. If you complete one (even if it is not shown on the list), the button at the top will show you it as completed. 'Buildings' #Get 1 Farm, 3 Quarries, 3 Mines, and 3 Lumbermills to level 5 ASAP. #Build 4-6 Homes to level 5 ASAP. #*You will not be able to do all this at once due to lack of resources; continue as you can. #As resources become available, build your main City buildings, including a Storage Vault. #*I recommend not building a theater. If you don't like the vault...it can be destroyed later. #*You should build your Science Center first, so you can begin researching. #Next, you will fill the remaining slots in your city with garrisons. There should be fourteen total. #L1 garrison to L6 as resources become available; you will be able to train ATs soon. #Upgrade buildings as needed to in order to research and train specific troops. For more detailed information, check out City Builds. 'Researching' Different people play differently; my intent is get decent troops as quickly as possible in order to begin farming. For detailed information about research and a suggested sequence of research, click here and scroll to the bottom for a table that has the research and buildings needed for the each research level. I suggest focusing on getting Weapon Calibration research up as soon as possible, since it improves your ranged troops and is needed for Lava Jaws; level 10 takes about fifteen days. Metallurgy is also extremely useful when attempting GD armor, and L8 is required for Giants. All research is important, but some may require more time than others. 'Troops' Troops are another thing that people have varying opinions on, but the starter troops are generally the same. #Train 200 LBM; with this you can hit L1-2 wilds and L1 camps. #Train 200 Porters; you will need these to carry loot back to your city. #Train LBM until you have 1K total. #You should be able to train ATs now; if so, train them until you get 200. #Continue training LBM until you have 15K and ATs until you have 2K. #*You can now hit L5 camps to get GD armor without risk of losing all your troops on one attack. This will be enough to send two-to-three waves at a time, which can double or triple your chance of obtaining a piece of GD armor. #*After getting your GD armor, you should try to get all of your eggs as soon as possible. Don't bother trying to get Water Dragon, Stone Dragon, Fire Dragon, or Wind Dragon armor right now. It takes forever, and you have plenty of time to do it later. #You should be able to train SSDs now. Train these until you get 50K. #*These are beasts at farming for resources and getting eggs and armor. (However, you may replace them with BDs later on; it all depends on personal preference.) #You should be able to fend for yourself and continue on with the help of your alliance from this point. 'Outposts' After you get your GD armor, you should immediately begin looking for your WD egg. Once you get it, search for the next one...and the next one...and so on, until you have all four inital OPs. If you are having problems getting eggs due to your GD's long healing times, research higher levels of Aerial Combat. However, do NOT bother with getting armor for your Elemental Dragons until you have all your eggs; the armor takes much longer to retrieve than the eggs do. You could spend weeks trying to get it; get all the eggs first, then worry about the armor with your free time. By the time you start looking for the armor, you will have plenty of troops, so you'll be able to send several waves to keep the wilds cleared of enemies. It is not only possible but also relatively easy to get all of your OPs in less than a week. For more information on OPs and how to build them, visit Outpost Builds. 'Walkthrough Example' This is NOT the only way to begin, but it is a decent example for the first week or two. From beginning to Battle Dragons in one-to-two weeks: Towards the end, buildings and research become a matter of opinion, but, if you get all of the buildings listed, you will be able to complete the research listed. Also, the buildings I build early on are listed. If it's not on this table then I don't build it ASAP... I waited until either towards the end of week one or week two to worry with those. Don't put resources into the Wall under any circumstances, its just a drain early on and should be done later, when you are already well-established. 1st_screen.png 2nd_pic.png 3rd_pic.png 4th_pic.png 5th_pic.png 6th_pic.png An Ideal City.png|An Ideal City 'Sources of Resources for Beginners' Starting out can be difficult, because resources are limited. So here are some places to get enough resources to keep buildings, troops, and research going at all times! Even if you are waving un-regenerated wildernesses, it will still give you a decent amount of resources per hit. Just make sure it's reasonably close to your city. 'Wildernesses' *Lakes **Give 1K Food x Level ***'(Ex. L5 lakes = 5K food)' ' *Forests **Give 1K Wood x Level *Hills **Give 1K Stone x Level *Mountains **Give 1K Metal x Level 10K wood is practically nothing later in the game, but, during the first week or two of the game, it can keep your city and troops moving forward. 'Camps ' Lower-level camps drop small speeds, which can be helpful after you gather a few. I suggest saving them for longer-distance attacks other than buildings, but this is just preference. * Food - 112,500 x Level *Wood - 5,000 x Level *Ore - 500 x Level *Stone - 500 x Level *Gold - 2,500 x Level L1-3 are the only ones you should worry about until you have at least 10K LBM, 200 Minos, and 1K ATs. The reasoning for this is that these give plenty of resources for beginners, and you will not risk losing all your troops by sending them all to a L5 camp. ''Usually, I jump lvl 4 and go straight to lvl 5 in order to get armor as soon as I have the troops listed above. This way, you're able to get the armor and resources you need.' 'Visual Walkthrough for DoA''' Category:Resources Category:City Category:Outposts Category:Wilderness Category:Anthropus Camps Category:Browse